MLB: Rating the front offices of the AL East
By Bill Felber
Assessing how each team’s front office helped or hurt the club’s profile during the 2020 MLB season.
Every MLB team’s success or failure ultimately rises or falls on the personnel moves made by its front office.
To build a winner, the first pre-requisite is talent, and it’s the job of the front office to acquire that talent.
How good a job did execs of the 30 major league teams do in fulfilling that prime directive during the 2020 season? Over the course of the next week, we’ll assess the 2020 performance of each front office division-by-division and team-by-team.
Our ratings are based on the collective short-term impact, as measured by Wins Above Average, of every personnel move made by every front office since the conclusion of play in 2019. A positive number represents front office success. In a few cases, those marked by an asterisk, the front office really succeeded; it generated a more positive impact than the margin by which the team qualified for post-season play.
If a rating is negative, that means the team’s front office reduced the club’s talent base during 2020. And woe betide a front office that gets an asterisk for negative performance; that means the team’s execs dealt, promoted or signed their way out of the playoffs.
- As a general proposition, MLB front offices influence their team’s performance in five ways:
- By the players they acquire in trades, purchase, or waiver claims with other teams.
- By the players they lose in those deals.
- By the free agents they sign.
- By the players they release or lose to free agency.
- By the rookies they promote.
We begin with the AL East. The teams are ordered not based on final standing, but rather on the extent of the front office’s positive contribution to the team profile.